Ian Brown
Atos Origin comes clean on sustainability
With the economic downturn, industry watchers could be forgiven for thinking that global warming had gone off the boil. Far from it. And as Jeff Chater, Atos Origin's UK Head of Sustainability, reminded us, 5,000 UK businesses are going to have to start managing their carbon footprints from 2010. But it's a double-edged sword for IT services: there's an opportunity to help, but not at the expense of inheriting their clients' dirty IT footprints.Legislation will compel 5,000 UK organisations to manage and reduce their carbon footprints from 2010
The Carbon Reduction Commitment is a legally binding carbon reduction and energy-saving scheme that will affect around 5,000 UK organisations not already covered by Climate Change Agreements (CCAs) and the EU Emissions Trading Directive Scheme (ETS). The CCA and EU ETS cover major energy users, such as heavy industry, iron and steel industries, and the utility industries. The CRC will cover the next tranche of UK organisations - those whose electricity consumption through half-hourly meters is greater than 6,000MWh/year. Who are these organisations? They will include the public sector (government departments and local authorities), telecoms providers, transport companies, large banks and financial institutions, large retailers, and hotel & leisure chains. Most by now know who they are, although Jeff Chater and Derek Ward, Executive VP and Sponsor of the vendor's sustainability programme, reckon that a few boards still won't be aware of their need to register - and the onus is on the organisations to register. According to Atos Origin's sustainability champions, the public sector, telecoms and transport companies are best prepared, while the rest of the private sector has some catching up to do.So how can IT services help? Clearly, IT is a significant part of the 6,000MWh/year or more of electricity that each of these organisations consume. According to Chater and Ward, IT services vendors therefore have an important educational role to play in advising how IT can help organisations to measure, monitor and reduce their carbon footprint. It's not just about convincing customers to swap out their old inefficient systems for new power-efficient ones.IT services vendors need a holistic view of sustainability
Although the emphasis of the CRC is on electrical consumption, Jeff Chater has a refreshingly holistic view on sustainability, something which hardware OEMs tend to pay lip service to - after all, hardware vendors want to sell you more kit. For Chater, it's important to take into consideration the fact that 70-80% of the carbon emissions associated with a laptop during its lifecycle, for example, happen during its manufacture. The onus on IT services suppliers is thus to help their customers keep the whole of their sustainability efforts in perspective. As UK Head of Sustainability, Chater's role is focused on Atos Origin's internal sustainability policies and ensuring it's a good citizen. Hence, Chater has implemented a three-point sustainability plan covering consumption and resources, energy usage, and waste. The company is working towards ISO 14001 compliance and says it's only the third IT company to sign up to the UK Carbon Trust's Carbon Management Programme.These are good indicators for an IT services company to have on its corporate CV. We think the CRC will drive more enterprises to consider outsourcing and a greater use of managed operations both in the data centre and at the desktop. Efficiency and sustainability in IT must be core competencies for any IT services vendor. However, there's a risk for IT services vendors too: that the CRC doesn't make it clear who has responsibility for outsourced IT's carbon footprint. Atos Origin and all the other leading UK IT services companies are, of course, among those affected by the CRC. But with services vendors additionally inheriting their clients' data-centre footprints, we would expect two consequences:- increased outsourcing charges to pay for mitigating their clients' CRC-related costs
- vendors moving more of their data-centre processing and storage outside of the UK and indeed outside of the Eurozone in anticipation of EU legislation.
